Only regret what you didn’t do
Matthew Riley, Fair Game’s Regional Media Manager, calls on all fans to get involved and help change football
EVERYONE makes mistakes. Owning errors helps undo the harm and plot a different path. But doing nothing leaves only regret and emptiness.
Coventry City, Brighton and Wimbledon show how financial mismanagement and poor oversight can be addressed and redressed through the collective power of fans and caring club stewardship. All three clubs lurched close to the abyss but were either reborn like AFC Wimbledon or overseen by benevolent and driven owners like Brighton’s Tony Bloom.
With hours left before Tracey Crouch’s seminal report launches on Wednesday evening, Westminster cannot be allowed to let us down. As Fair Game advocate Alison McGovern MP wrote in the Guardian on Sunday: “Give people their football dreams: no guarantee of winning, but a chance at the journey. Parliament must get to work on that dream.”
We all have a network of fans, friends and local MPs. We may know people who work for our local club or are active in our community. Let’s contact, engage and enthuse them to create momentum. Your social media followers, Facebook friends and email contacts can all focus on the Crouch launch. Your input on football forums and comments in YouTube videos will all help build a profile.
You can provide local radio stations and media with content, or contact us at contact@fairgameuk.org and we will write copy or appear on their shows. With every influence point activated we can be part of the solution instead of feeding into the problem. Sitting on our hands or joining the race to the bottom of online misanthropy is the point of least resistance. By refusing to engage with football’s broken model we can rail against its results rather than hack through the online jungle to address these problems But. most importantly, we can say we did something, anything, to pass the game onto our children as an heirloom instead of a liability.
We as fans are the engine of change, but MPs must steer meaningful legislation with teeth. The ones we can trust have sided with us and they will do the right thing and bring in the waverers, whilst shaming the presentee politicians looking to run the clock down on yet another initiative. We mustn’t let the tail wag the dog. MPs who don’t represent us have no mandate to act. They may need a gentle reminder of their civic duty to us as football fans, voters and members of our community. Show them the honourable work by Fair Game MPs like Alison McGovern, Damian Green and Tim Farron, and the mayors Andy Burnham, of Greater Manchester, and Steve Rotheram of Liverpool City Region
This is not a drill. Failure is important as the arena of growth and change. But that time has passed. If we do not activate the Crouch report through muscular legislation, our failure will be existential. This is the moment for an inclusive and community-focussed movement centred around you. Act now without regret or fail to act and repent at leisure.